Report: ByteDance accelerates AI layout and will launch a development platform that allows users to create chatbots.

After ByteDance completely withdrew from the gaming business, it immediately increased its investment in the AI field.

On December 4th, according to an internal memo obtained by the media, ByteDance plans to launch a public beta version of a project called "Robot Development Platform" at the end of this month. This project will allow users to create their own chatbots. This latest development indicates ByteDance's future strategic plan, which is to explore new ways to integrate its existing products with new generative AI products.

According to informed sources, ByteDance is working on developing its own text-to-image AI generator, similar to Midjourney.

Unlike other internet giants who have joined the "battle of models," ByteDance's entry into the generative AI field is not through large models, but through the "Volcano Ark" large model service platform, which provides comprehensive platform services such as model fine-tuning, evaluation, and inference for enterprises.

Recently, it was reported that ByteDance has established a new department called Flow, which focuses on AI innovation business. Hong Dingkun, Vice President of Technology, serves as the technical leader, and Zhu Wenjia, Product Technology Leader of TikTok and Leader of the Large Model Team, serves as the business leader. Prior to this, the department had already launched two AI dialogue products, Dou Bao and Cici, targeting the domestic and overseas markets respectively.

ByteDance is now allocating resources and manpower to information platform operation and commercialization, and its new explorations are focused on artificial intelligence.

According to informed sources, the establishment of the Flow department is part of a series of business and structural adjustments made by ByteDance in November. In addition to actively recruiting, Flow has also selected personnel from various business units such as Feishu and Douyin to develop large model consumer products.

Within the ByteDance community, Flow has recently posted recruitment notices, and social recruitment has also been ongoing for some time. In the notice, it is stated that Flow is an AI innovation business team under ByteDance, and it has already launched two products, Dou Bao and Cici, in both domestic and overseas markets, with multiple AI-related innovative products being incubated.

According to reports, ByteDance is pursuing three different strategies in the large model field. The leaders are Zhu Wenjia, who focuses on exploring the implementation of large model business; Li Hang, Director of ByteDance ALLab (Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), who focuses on academic research; and Xiang Liang, Head of Data-AML (Data-Application Machine Learning), who is in the middle of the first two.

In the large model business, ByteDance is focusing on both language and image modalities. The language large model team is led by the ByteDance search department and currently has a team size of about a dozen people. The image large model team is led by the Intelligent Creation Team under the Product Research and Engineering Architecture Department. Both teams report to Zhu Wenjia.

In August of this year, ByteDance launched its first large language model, "Dou Bao," and the multimodal large model, BuboGPT. At the end of August, Douyin's Yunque large model was approved under the first batch of "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services" and was opened to the public. At this point, ByteDance's comprehensive layout from the model layer to the application layer is gradually being perfected.